Josh C's Movie Review of Beowulf (2007)

Awesome 3D effects, little else
Josh C - wrote on 11/18/07

This is one movie that is much better than the book, but that still isn't saying too much. It was full of action, gore and amazing 3d effects but it still came off dull. I saw the IMAX 3D version and feel that if I hadn't I would have a lower opinion of this film. The 3d effects made this movie completely worth wild to check out in the theatre and I would recommend it to anyone. However, if you miss it in 3D I would suggest waiting until video.

The action sequences were pretty good most of the time, sometimes they felt a bit to "video gamey" for my liking. It had the feel of watching a video game cut sequence which I have never cared for. The dialog was very reminiscent to that of 300 which obviously wasn't known for having spectacular dialog but it had the same feel and style that 300 used.

There were several things that I didn't quite understand in the movie, and it really ruined certain scenes to me. One of them was when he fought the monster "Grendle". He fought the monster naked because to fight it with armor wouldn't be fair since it didn't fight with armor. My problem with this is not the act of him doing this, but the following 10 minutes that followed. Every scene where it would have seemed natural to show his crotch was instead turned into this stupid joke where they hid it behind an object or person. So instead of him just wearing underwear (which I feel would have been the best thing for the movie to do) they took the focus of the fight away from the action. This is the same thing the Simpson's movie did with Bart but obviously they were making a comedy and Beowulf is not.

Other scenes even got laughter from the crowd over crappy dialog that could have been avoided if they just thought it out a bit better. One of them was when the queen said what sounded like "Many brave men have traveled across seas to taste my kings meat". Are they really trying to add potty humor in Beowulf? It just seemed a bit of a stretch for the film.

If you can look past the obvious flaws, check it out in 3D because the effects are awesome. If not, don't waste your time or money on this one.